Wednesday, March 21, 2007

Strange and Wonderful

Do you ever read something so strange and wonderful that you have to share it with the world? I have huge papers to write so of course I am going through back posts of some of my favorite bloggers. I just read Mimi Smartypants revelation:

As I got off the train later some guy was handing out menus for some new Mexican restaurant. I took one because I love reading menus. Then it was like angels were singing and the heavens opened up and the Hand of God came down and started rubbing me in all my happiest private parts, because I realized that the entire Mexican restaurant menu, in order, could be sung to the tune of "Don't Stop Believing" by Journey! NO, SERIOUSLY. IT IS QUITE EERIE. It is like that Emily Dickinson/Gilligan's Island/Yellow Rose of Texas thing. For instance, take that "streetlight people, living just to find emotion" line and substitute "chicken flautas, beef and cheese chimichanga" and you will have just a tiny taste of the magic that I found.

I had to go find Don't Stop Believing on YouTube so I could get a proper idea of what she was saying, and it was brilliant! I now have Mexican food songs stuck in my head ... which reminds me: my husband made Mole (or is it molé?) a few days ago and I could be eating it right now (That boy makes the best mole ... ), so I am going to go take a break while I get myself some.

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I have recently realized that laconic means (basically) terse. I had always assumed that people were referring to something as being reminiscent of Jacques Lacan's philosophies. I remember spending ages in multiple classes (both Critical Theory and Compromising Positions) in college discussing Lacanian Imagery, and I assumed that laconic was just people misspelling his name and misinterpreting his theory (because it isn't often that you can refer to something as both terse and as having a complex relationship between gender-related imagery and vocalization(1)). I realized my mistake just now when I was researching disaster preparedness plans for libraries and somehow got to reading a page where the raven from Poe's "The Raven" was described as laconic. Obviously the raven has not been silenced, and as I recall it is heavily implied that the raven is male (although I remember nothing specific and I definitely remember no phallic objects connecting themselves to "him"), but the word seeemed even more out of context than usual ... and it was being used by an author I tend to respect, so I looked it up and Voila! Instant vocabulary lesson. How had I missed this one?

1) Yes, I know that is the worst ever explanation of Lacanian Imagery ever. You try explaining it in half a sentence! The basics: phallic imagery, vaginal imagery, woman being silenced (and vaginal imagery implying that someone cannot speak for themselves), etc.

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I have a doctor's appointment to go to. Have a fantastic day! And look: somewhat regular updates and LABELS! I'm workin' it!

About Me

If you want to put my blog into boxes, I guess you would call me a librarian blogger and a mommy blogger. I'm a children's librarian who also loves YA, so the books I talk about are mostly birth through YA. My kids are really little (4 years and 2 years as of 5/11), so that's the sort of bambinos I usually talk about. Most of my rambly book posts come from my liberal feminist background. Just a warning.